Hidden Fires

In this Western historical romance set in 1800s Texas, a preacher's daughter reluctantly agrees to marry a wealthy playboy . . . even if it means risking her heart. The moment Lauren Holbrook walked into the Texas mansion, she knew she'd been tricked. Instead of asking her to become a secretary, wealthy matriarch Olivia Lockett proposes a scandalous offer: to marry Jared Lockett, her rebellious son and heir to the dynasty, in name only. Lauren can't know Olivia's real motive, but she's achingly aware of her feelings for Jared. Now, in spite of terrible risks, she has to trust her reckless husband. She has strong feelings for him . . . but are they strong enough?

"I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance money." Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson in The Sign of Four. Early 1902 - On the eve of Newgate Prison's demolition, Watson spies Holmes leaving a public sale of the prison's miscellany in the company of a beautiful stranger and in possession of an unusual trophy: the death mask of a woman who, more than twenty years earlier, had been executed for the murder of her three children. Holmes agrees to satisfy Watson's curiosity about the memento by recounting the decades-old history of its subject. Late December, 1878. A young Sherlock Holmes is living in a modest room at Montague Street, dividing his time between the lecture halls and the laboratories, "...studying all those branches of science which might make me more efficient". At the shop of the eccentric, old bookseller, Brodie, Holmes is introduced to the beautiful Violet Rose Turner, the young mistress and protégé of Professor James Moriarty, and the mother of his three children. When a house fire takes the lives of Moriarty's children, it is presumed to be accidental until Miss Turner's suspicious conduct prompts a further investigation, which reveals that the children had been poisoned before the fire was deliberately set. Miss Turner is charged with the murders; as her trial proceeds, Holmes sets out to prove her innocence, yet each of his discoveries seems only to confirm her guilt even as the court-room testimony assures her conviction. Not until the sentence is carried out does Holmes happen upon a scrap of evidence that sets off "...that mixture of imagination and reality which is the basis of my art" and leads to the exposure of a brilliant and sinister deception. Hidden Fires is equal parts complex puzzle, Victorian era thriller, and an "origin story" that explains familiar elements of Holmes' background and character: a distrust of women that exempts the "Violets" who are always treated chivalrously; an acquaintance with the "street urchin" Wiggins; the acquisition of a priceless Stradivarius; and the real inspiration for that bullet-marked V. R. above his sitting room mantle. Join Watson as Holmes recounts "...one of the most extraordinary narratives of my friend's career - indeed, one which may have shaped what he was to become."

Shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature Elemental, fierce and full of wonder, the Cairngorm mountains are the high and rocky heart of Scotland. To know them would take forever, to love them demands a kind of courageous surrender. In The Hidden Fires, Merryn Glover undertakes that challenge with Nan Shepherd as companion and guiding light. Following in the footsteps and contours of The Living Mountain, she explores the same landscapes and themes as Shepherd's seminal work. This is a journey separated by time but unified by space and purpose, a conversation between two women across nearly a century that explores how entering the life of a mountain can illuminate our own. An Australian who grew up in the Himalayas, her early experiences of the Scottish hills and weather left her cold. But gradually acclimatising and with an approach like Shepherd's, that is more mountain wandering than mountaineering, she discovers the spark that sets the hills and herself on fire. Through Glover's deepening encounter, the wild majesty and iridescence of the Cairngorms is revealed in this beautiful evocation of landscape, place and identity. 'Merryn Glover's The Hidden Fires is not just brave, it is remarkable' – Sir John Lister-Kaye

From 1810, when a newspaper published the first account of “Colter’s Run,” to 2012, when one hundred and fourscore participants in Montana’s annual John Colter Run charged up and down rugged trails—even across the waist-deep Gallatin River—interest in Colter, the alleged discoverer of Yellowstone Park, has never waned. Drawing on this endless fascination with an individual often called the first American mountain man, this book offers an innovative, comprehensive study of a unique figure in American history. Despite his prominent role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the early exploration of the West, Colter is distinctly different from Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, and the other legends of the era because they all left documents behind that allow access to the men themselves. Colter, by contrast, left nothing, not a single letter, diary, or reminiscence, so that second-, third-, or fourth-hand accounts of his adventures are all we have. Guiding readers through this labyrinth of hearsay, rumor, and myth, this is the first book to tell the whole story of Colter and his legend, examining everything that is known—or supposedly known—about Colter and showing how historians and history buffs alike have tried in vain to get back to Colter the man, know what he said and feel what he felt, but have ended up never seeing him clearly, finding instead an enigma they cannot unravel.

How can you live in the present when you’re trying to bury the past?

Five powerful, hard-hitting monologues in which the playwright tackles head-on issues of violence, intolerance of others, narrow concepts of community and nation, each with a twist that lifts it into the realm of real drama. Award-winning playwright Manjula Padmanabhan, in her attempt to come to grips with the violence of these times, excels in this suite of short one-handers which leaves the viewer both shaken and thoughtful. Manjula Padmanabhan is a playwright, writer, illustrator and cartoonist living in New Delhi. Her play Harvest was awarded the Onassis International Cultural Competition Prize for Theatrical Plays in 1997.